Indigenous housing 'beset by delays'

Two houses in Santa Teresa still have no roofs, 11 months after they were damaged

Sara Everingham: ABC

The Federal Opposition has criticised the Government for delaying action in dealing with housing needs for Indigenous Australia.

A report this week has revealed that 11,000 homes are needed just to meet extreme needs.

The Opposition's Indigenous affairs spokesman, Tony Abbott, has just been on a tour of central Australia and says the Federal Government's remote Indigenous housing program for the NT is beset by delays.

He blames some of the Government's changes to the intervention for the slow progress.

Mr Abbott visited the community of Santa Teresa, south-east of Alice Springs, where he saw two houses which still have no roofs 11 months after they were damaged in a severe storm.

"Santa Teresa is not exactly a million miles from Alice. There have been unroofed houses in that community for almost a year now -$450,000 was pledged to put roofs on those places and they still stand abandoned and derelict," he said.

"Now this is a symptom of utterly dysfunctional government. This is symptomatic of a failed state in remote Australia."

When the former federal government launched the intervention, it put the high-profile Major General Dave Chalmers in charge as the operational commander.

The intervention is now run from the Minister's Department and Mr Abbott has told the ABC's Northern Territory Stateline program that change has been detrimental.

Fixing the roofs is the responsibility of Northern Territory authorities.

The NT's Minister for Housing, Rob Knight, says he is sorry for the delay.

"I think it has been too long and I apologise for that," he said.

"There's such structural weakness in the whole buildings that it wouldn't have been worthwhile to actually do it and there would have been problems going forward.

"So I've asked the department to demolish those houses and build two new ones."

Mr Abbott has raised other concerns about housing at Santa Teresa related to the Federal Government's $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP) which he says is troubled by 'torpor and sloth'.

Mr Abbott says the community was originally promised $5 million under the SIHIP, but that the money has been scaled back to $2.8 million.